NASA mysteriously trying to pull world’s fastest plane, SR-71 Blackbird, out of retirement — and won’t say why
Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I'd love to know what NASA has planned for it.
https://nypost.com/2026/09/29/us-news/us-quietly-sr-71-blackbird-out-of-retirement-and-wont-say-why/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works
340 replies
They want to fly it counter-clockwise around the Earth to turn back time and save Harambe.
Everything fell apart after Harambe. Save us NASA.
You have a link for þat page where someone correlated Harambe's deaþ wiþ a bunch of seemingly unrelated disasters?
Stop trying to make thorn happen. Thorn isn't going to happen.
C’mon, they ain’t hurtin’ n’body. A couple ‘a archaic characters that distinguish this user in their post is a call back to the Internet of old. Yer pappy’s internet. It’s nice to see in these days of, hell, “super intelligence” an’ bean memes. Let the [insert gender here] have a lil’ fun with language. Might even do ya some good to encounter them thorns from time to time. Yeah I reckon it’ll make ya read them posts with intention.
They inspired me to bring back æ. Like archæology. You can't even notice unless you squint
You totally can. But it's better than thorn by a lot
Back in my day, we kept our dipthongs where the belonged... between the covers.
Aw leave them, it's a great little bit of fediverse culture.
The reactions make me think of this about why it's rude to suck at WoW.
I think it's kinda cute, tbh. Too bad the comment itself an obnoxious bit of trolling.
Is that trolling? It must be going over my head because I thought that was a real question :(
It's possible that I was overly quick to judge, but the comment seems to be gone now so I guess we'll never know. 🤷
For me the comment is still there, weird
I've come around to this poster actually, next time people moan about them I'll start using the long s!
I'm ƿyþ you!
Ask an Iraqi if they think the timeline went bad in 2016.
That's the problem with rolling back time, at no time was it going great for everybody. Someone somewhere sometime was having a bad time. Maybe the 90s wasn't that bad, maybe. No, wait, the Rwandans and the Bosnians weren't having a good time. Shit.
It's this and many other things that have led me to believe an alternate canon where Superman is just a real dummy.
Krypton didn't blow up, his parents just did a Joe Dirt on him. Dumbass probably moved one of their moons as well so they just left him on the church doorstep called Earth.
Isn't superman only super because of energy from the sun?
Have you heard of Captain Hero? You basically described him, lol
*unzipping noise
This timeline is fucked, may as well use our resources to create better ones
OK - so, Trump thinks they are cool and wants them back in action despite having better technology already in place. This tracks because of his dumb Trump-class battleship in development, which will be closed down soon after being commissioned because it's a dumb idea.
Guy at NASA:
NASA has always been into atmospheric research and vehicle design. Pulling out a SR-71 is going to be faster and cheaper than building a new thing and they have a history of using hand-me-downs. I’m glad they are doing stuff, though this administration is probably focused more on “coolness” and bribes for profits. Getting the Blackbird is cool and the secrecy could be actual national security or free research for a buddy. I’d love to see more long lead space projects, deep space probes, inner planet landings, and outer planet orbiters.
I love the blackbird / a-12 / yf-12 family. They're truly the pinnacle of pre-computerized engineering in many ways. Most of the design was completed before 1960 - a mach 3 aircraft, made with slide rules and deeeeep institutional knowledge. People joked that Kelly Johnson could see air, he was so good at designing aircraft and anticipating problems.
that said: why bring it back?
it's gotta be a successor - I don't know if we could bring the airframes back to operational status, and the fuel situation is wacky. does anyone even make jp7 anymore? panther piss?
and even if you could bring it back to operational status, and supply the specialized tankers (most tankers fuel from a common supply they run off of, but the jp7 carrying tankers for the sr-71 have a separate tank just for the blackbird) and train everyone up, the blackbird is visible from hundreds of miles away on modern radar. It was stealthier than most of it's peers but never a stealth aircraft like the f117.
This all tells me: it's gotta be a new toy.
Probably because the Pedo-in-Chief saw it in a movie. I swear that's how he gets some of his stupid fucking ideas-- like the reopening of Alcatraz. You can't tell me that moron didn't just finish watching The Rock (nic Cage movie) when he decided that.
Well, Mayday did just come out in September, and that features an SR-71 ish spyplane
Next up: A base in the bermuda triangle
A prison for monsters, run by Amelia Earhart.
That sounds awesome
It's actually a plot point in the Rick and Morty spin-off "President Curtis."
His racist sidekick Musk was also obsessed enough to name one of his weird brood after that plane too.
The fun way to watch that movie is from the perspective that it's really a bond movie that doesn't focus on Connery
Never heard the Alcatraz one!
Just visited San Francisco for the first time a few weeks ago, and Alcatraz was dope. Thought it's always been open to the public.
It has been open as a tourist destination, he wants to reopen it as a prison. I went there when I was a kid.
Ohhhh yeah fuck that shit
NASA is researching quieter supersonic flight, and I can't help but think of how the (also Lockheed Martin) X-59-
-has a extreme wing profile/nose, not unlike SR-71:
It's the only way they can be sure it's not full of AI slop.
On one hand, this news is really fucking cool!
On the other, the motivation for this is guaranteed to be really fucking dumb!
There could be some legitimate uses (NASA operates U-2 spy planes over wildfires to this day) but it would not surprise me at all if it is for some dumb reason.
I'm really hoping it's NASA doing some really cool science shit, otherwise you'd expect a military organisation to be doing this.
They're conducting on-going research into aircraft designs that can go supersonic without producing a sonic boom (the thing that made supersonic jets impractical for cross-country flights along with the insane about of fuel they burn) so I'd guess they need a reliable supersonic jet to test against.
NASA probably has lots of data on the SR71 so it makes sense to use that to test new concepts on.
They decided that the classic speed check story needs an update after all these years.
As told by:
Major Brian Shul, USAF Retired
The Cessna pilot: "All those guys did this because of what I did!" :)
With that shaky voice, probably more like "what the fuck am I even doing up here?"
Another Cessna pilot that made a bunch of stuff happen.
Goddamnit
Wouldn't have guessed that he'd be a bit of an unstable fellow.
I'll stop and read this, every time.
Same. Which is why I didn't mind finding it.
I think there's part of every nerd that loves seeing a real expert casually embarrass some cocky hotshot.
Thanks for taking the time. I must have read that five times before but it's such a great story I'll always take the time.
I saw Shul (and Walter too) speak at an event near my house shortly before he died. He closed with this story, which if I'm honest I'm sure 90% of the crowd was there to hear. It was like the Beatles playing Hey Jude or something.
https://youtu.be/8AyHH9G9et0 If anyone wants the full experience
The plane sped up by 100 knots between the text and recording :p
Sled Driver is a great book also if you're into that sort of thing.
It's a famously difficult (or at least expensive) book to find in person. I have a PDF copy of it.
Several years ago I met a U-2 pilot, and naturally we talked about the SR-71. I mentioned I had a PDF copy of Sled Driver. His eyes lit up and said he'd been looking for at least a digital copy forever. I sent him the PDF, and in thanks he invited me to the base and showed me all around the U-2 stuff; the vacuum chamber, the room in which they suited up, the planes on the ground, and most impressively took me in the chase car for a U-2 that was practicing touch-and-gos.
That's a once in lifetime experience. I'm jealous.
Here's a peek of what I saw.
Shul's Law in action.
Hoped for it. Found it. Read it. Loved it all over again.
This was such a cool read, thank you for sharing!
We already got that update:
There were a lot of things we couldn't do in an Cessna 172, but we were some of the slowest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the 172. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Mundane, maybe. Even boring at times. But there was one day in our Cessna experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be some of the slowest guys out there, at least for a moment.
It occurred when my CFI and I were flying a training flight. We needed 40 hours in the plane to complete my training and attain PPL status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the 40 hour mark. We had made the turn back towards our home airport in a radius of a mile or two and the plane was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the left seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because I would soon be flying as a true pilot, but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Bumbling across the mountains 3,500 feet below us, I could only see the about 8 miles across the ground. I was, finally, after many humbling months of training and study, ahead of the plane.
I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for my CFI in the right seat. There he was, with nothing to do except watch me and monitor two different radios. This wasn't really good practice for him at all. He'd been doing it for years. It had been difficult for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my this part of my flying career, I could handle it on my own. But it was part of the division of duties on this flight and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. My CFI was so good at many things, but he couldn't match my expertise at sounding awkward on the radios, a skill that had been roughly sharpened with years of listening to LiveATC.com where the slightest radio miscue was a daily occurrence. He understood that and allowed me that luxury.
Just to get a sense of what my CFI had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Denver Center, not far below us, controlling daily traffic in our sector. While they had us on their scope (for a good while, I might add), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to ascend into their airspace.
We listened as the shaky voice of a lone SR-71 pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied:"Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground."
Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the " Houston Center voice." I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn't matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.
Just moments after the SR-71's inquiry, an F-18 piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. "Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground." Boy, I thought, the F-18 really must think he is dazzling his SR-71 brethren. Then out of the blue, a Twin Beech pilot out of an airport outside of Denver came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Twin Beech driver because he sounded very cool on the radios. "Center, Beechcraft 173-Delta-Charlie ground speed check". Before Center could reply, I'm thinking to myself, hey, that Beech probably has a ground speed indicator in that multi-thousand-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol' Delta-Charlie here is making sure that every military jock from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He's the slowest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new bug-smasher. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: "173-Delta-Charlie, Center, we have you at 90 knots on the ground."
And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that my CFI was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done - in mere minutes we'll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Beechcraft must die, and die now. I thought about all of my training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.
Somewhere, half a mile above Colorado, there was a pilot screaming inside his head. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the right seat. That was the very moment that I knew my CFI and I had become a lifelong friends. Very professionally, and with no emotion, my CFI spoke: "Denver Center, Cessna 56-November-Sierra, can you give us a ground speed check?" There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. "Cessna 56-November-Sierra, I show you at 76 knots, across the ground."
I think it was the six knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that my CFI and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most CFI-like voice: "Ah, Center, much thanks, we're showing closer to 72 on the money."
For a moment my CFI was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when Denver came back with, "Roger that November-Sierra, your E6B is probably more accurate than our state-of-the-art radar. You boys have a good one."
It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable stroll across the west, the Navy had been owned, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Slow, and more importantly, my CFI and I had crossed the threshold of being BFFs. A fine day's work. We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to our home airport.
For just one day, it truly was fun being the slowest guys out there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/3gxj8e/deleted_by_user/cu2hhkq/
How can it be the fastest plane if it's not even painted red?
Cursed source
It's either clickbait or bullshit.
I agree with the skepticism, however this one is being reported by real aviation news sites, Aviation Weekly specifically.
The confirmed news is an SR71 that used to be parked outdoors has been moved.
Investigative journalism and some theorizing goes further, I found The Aviationist article saying "according to Trimble’s reporting, NASA also contacted former members of the SR-71 program to determine whether they would be interested to participate in a potential return-to-flight effort."
Hey, at least it's not paywalled.
Why would propaganda be paywalled?
Damn, that is one hell of a question.
That is SO funny.
They fired all the people who knew how to build shit and now they are desperately sending a bunch of newbies to "reverse engineer" the plane and try to figure out how it works. /s
Most of the people who knew how to build that plane are dead to be fair
I mean, it's not that old of an airframe. I'm only middle aged and I saw the last time it flew in 1991. My dad just retired from the FAA a couple years ago and when he was in the military he maintained the flight suits for the SR71 and U2 programs.
The original engineers may have passed, but the crew and engineers responsible for the huge amount of maintenance for the airframe are still around and probably have more functional knowledge about the airframe than the designers.
Edit: 1999 not 1991.
Only a few more years before the mesothelioma takes the last of the maintenance crew, that thing was genuinely filled nose to tail (proverbially, it was actually full of fuel) with asbestos
Manufacturing and design knowledge is mostly lost and rediscovered every few decades by the US. On one project or the other
Seconding this; my dad worked on the U2 for 30-odd years and he's still kicking!
Oh nice, were you guys stationed out at Beale AFB?
Claude, reverse enginer plane, make no mistake.
They would be pretty retired but this probably isn't that far off...
I like the idea that one becomes more and more retired each year after they stop working.
So Space Cowboys 2, except
principalprincple either never got written down or DOGE cut the funding to restore the microfiche with the details so all the details got destroyedEDIT: Spelling.
Given the US diet and healthcare system, I'd say many are definitely 6ft under
So Fogbank? With only difference being all fogbank engineers dying of old age rather than management incompetence.
Yeah but what everyone forgets is that knowledge can be relearned if you do it right.
And the issue of Fogbank was eventually solved by having modern day scientist study the problem (it was something like contamination of boron being used to make the fogbank material.)
The SR71 could be manufactured today if we wanted to. It wasn't built with some magical spells that are forever lost to history. There are more people alive now that know how to machine titanium than there were when they built them originally. Its just a matter of investment in the labor and tooling to make them again, which probably isn't worth it which is why they'll keep flying the remaining planes.
One of the worse internet "I'm smart" thoughts is that "we've lost the ability to make insert outdated item because all that talent is dead." Ok, so retrain new talent like every generation has to do anyways and maybe next time don't pinch pennies and shutdown the factory with all these gods of manufacturing, instead bring in apprentices and have them learn from these masters.
But what about the profit margins and the shareholders?!?!? PE firms can't milk successful companies to death for $$$$ if they actually invest in talent.
Absolutely, and although they did re-invent Fogbank, it took almost 100 millions, makes me wonder what would it cost to keep the knowledge from disappearing in the first place
Nothing about producing nuclear weapons, let alone miniaturized thermo-nuclear devices optimized to get the most efficient reaction during detonation is cheap. And the knowledge wasn't necessarily lost, that is impossible to determine since we're dealing with highly classified secrets regarding the construction of a nuclear weapon.
It's possible that while making fogbank they merely got a contaminated batch of boron. Let's say, for example, you find your grandma's recipe for apple pie. But when your mother tastes it she says it's a little off. You then eventually realize that you used apples that weren't ripe yet, or that grandma used apples that were beginning to get soft. Thats not really the same as "lost knowledge" it's more an experience gap.
Clickbait always makes these things sound like we've lost this information and now we're screwed because it can never be relearned and no one knows anything oh no doom and gloom. Truth is lots of knowledge, through-out history, has been "lost" and then "rediscovered" primarily because this info becomes less valued/important and eventually someone needs it again so they rediscover it. Happened alot with mathematical theories and concepts, like calculus.
No one wants to lose knowledge but no one wants to pay to keep it alive the proper way (master/apprentice system that ensures these tricks of the trade are continually passed on) so we favor a system where specialized experts (scientists) are called in to solve these issues and rediscover the tricks of the trade using the scientific process. Either way you pay for the knowledge but we wanted to save money and shutter a bunch of cold-war era defense companies when the cold-war ended. The consequences of that are when you want to resume making nuclear weapons of the quality America demands you have to hire those scientists to figure out all the pesky details like fogbank.
Makes sense. Also agree on the last part
Based on their work on the X-59, I wonder if they just want to collect sensor data on its sonic boom characteristics, and feed that into a model for sonic booms.
They don't need to be able to build something in order to be able to learn something from that thing in operation.
In the words of the nasa director themselves during the keynote speech "Are you sure that the silhouette we showed was an SR-71?"
The reason they got rid of surveillance jets is that satellites can do it without any risk to a pilot and on a 24 hr basis.
Perhaps they've decided that satellites can't be relied on. Kessler syndrome contingency?
During the Cold War, it had to overfly Russian airspace to be able to see far enough. They were within their rights to shoot at unauthorized aircraft in their airspace.
However, it could see a lot higher percentage of Iran without overflying, and Iran can’t legally shoot at something in international airspace
International airspace isn't out of bounds when there's an active conflict going on.
Blackbird didn't overly the USSR. The U2 did, and they learned the hard way that Soviet missiles went a lot higher than anyone thought.
Good point - I’m probably remembering fiction, but also Soviet Union attempting to target the aircraft
…. And we have the incidents of overflying Swedish airspace, and I think Danish
Any country involved in a shooting war is within their rights to shoot at any object they have reason to believe is a military target, regardless of where that object is.
Outside their airspace, in international waters, inside another country, on the fucking Moon - the limits are technological, not legal.
If the object isn't a military target, then they aren't within their rights to shoot at it no matter where it is. Not that that has stopped attacks on civilians in the past (e.g. Russian ballistic missile attacks on apartment blocks, US drone strikes of fishing boats), only that the laws of war forbid such things.
I chuckled the other day when I heard that the planned attack on the UK airbase used by the US for attacks on Iran, is being blamed on Iran, and also being called terrorism.
I don't think it's terrorism when it's a legitimate military target that takes place during war time. While it is possible for terrorism to exist during a war (you know, something like bombing schools, hospitals, residences, etc), an attack on an enemy's base doesn't fit.
All the Arab countries condemning Iran for attacking US bases and US military personnel conducting the war on Iran from their land is just as comical.
Terrorism is, by definition, by a non state actor. If a government does it, it's just a war crime.
Didn’t you hear? The war is over. We “won”….. TACO sez, “ I didn't say it, I declared it”
You can't visually see over the horizon and even then you have blocked lines of sight, etc. A satellite has no such restrictions.
Satellites do have such restrictions. While you may expect the angle to be higher than for an aircraft, a satellite will not be directly overhead most of the earth. You’re still limited by angle and shadow, as well as time and frequency. Unless the target is high enough priority to reposition the satellite, it will be an oblique angle at a predictable time. While that angle will on average be higher than an aircraft, the aircraft can find different angles, at different times, with as much frequency as you like.
Perhaps some things are more visible to an aircraft from the east than a satellite from the north, or perhaps the target has camouflage procedures at the known satellite schedule but an aircraft is more likely to catch them operating
The biggest issue with satellites is they are on a schedule. The soviets knew the schedule and would move things like trucks around when they knew it wasn't overhead.
You might like this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Black_(book) It goes into detail on the keyhole satellite program and such. He says he used publicly available info and so couldn't be accused of violating classified restrictions.
Thanks. I’ll take a look for it. Not listed as an e-book at my library so I might have to look for a physical copy
The NY Post is a diseased maga rag and should never be used as a source.
I like its lines, but realistically, I don't know what you'd use it for unless you need extremely high-resolution images.
We know, from Trump's probably-ill-advised tweet back in 2019, that we can do 10-centimeter resolution from reconaissance satellites like USA-224, near the physical limitations of light resolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-224
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
The SR-71 operates at a tenth to a thirtieth USA-224's altitude, so assuming comparable imaging systems (which I could believe) and that there aren't stability or thermal issues (which I'd be less-certain of) it can get ten to thirty times the resolution of a KH11 satellite from the lower altitude. I'm not sure how much utility there is in reconnaissance to getting 1 cm or ⅓ cm resolution images instead of 10 cm.
I can think of a couple of reasons to use the SR-71 again.
the sr-71 is definitely not a scramble-able plane:
when they were doing surveys of iraq during desert storm they had to field a fleet of eight tanker planes over the indian ocean just so the damn thing would make it from japan to the gulf.
Edit: oh and those are specially designed tanker planes because of course it uses JP-7 so they needed separate tanks for that and their own fuel. they also needed to be able to refuel at like 850km/h or the blackbird would just drop out of the sky.
love that plane.
Iirc it starts nearly empty and is only fueled up in the air, so basically no way around tanker planes.
that's apparently not true, it would take off with half fuel because the landing gear could buckle under the full weight.
even with a full tank it could only go for about 90 minutes though so anything nontrivial did indeed require a tanker.
I'm sure a skilled politician could sell this as being basically the same ;)
still faster than launching a new satellite
we have over 15 thousand of the things up there now, surely someone must have seen something
Can't they do all that with drones?
You need to deliver the drones to the location of interest though. And regularly bring fresh ones I guess. A stealthy and fast as fuck delivery platform would make sense.
I don't think the SR-71 has much cargo space if that's what you're suggesting.
Imagining an SR-71 crewmember now opening a little hatch and awkwardly shoving little drones out, to see them instantly torn apart in the winds at the slowest speed it can go, 850 km/h.
Well, what does NASA do?
I think it's a pretty safe bet that NASA wants it to test something about aerodynamics at extremely high speeds. Perhaps they want it to deploy some experiment at mach 3. Sometimes you just don't know if your simulation models are correct, and you need to try something in the real world.
I suppose it's also possible they want it to get some close up footage of a rocket during launch or reentry.
But I think the most likely answer is still that they just need something that goes very fast.
The thing is sounding rockets do exactly that and are still in service (vs somehow unfucking an ancient plane that hasn't been serviced in decades with tooling that no longer exists) and there are multiple companies out there operating supersonic drones for high speed tests of whatever you wanna do.
I dont see the value in bringing the blackbird back into service. I think its more likely that they want to freshen up the paint and park it at some press conference / event.
Well, you can control your airspeed and attitude in an airplane, solid rockets just make a ballistic arch and they only accelerate, they can't maintain a speed.
So if you want to test how air behaves in a particular regime, you can't actually maintain that regime with a sounding rocket, so the best you can get is a snapshot.
Honestly, if what they're working on is dialing-in their computer models, the more precise data they can get, the better. It makes sense to maintain a speed for a minute, so you can get a really good running average on your measurements of air pressure, heating, drag, etc. They may want to conduct the same tests at different altitudes and airspeeds, and probably all in level flight. To control all those factors, that's near impossible to do with a rocket.
Again, I don't know what they're doing, what their actual plans are. I'm just saying there are absolutely plausible reasons to use this aircraft.
Satellites are too predictable, plus too infrequent. If there are two spy satellites that cover Iran, for example, Iran can easily know when and what direction, then presumably take some effort to cover whatever they want to hide.
A reconnaissance plane can show up without warning, any time, loiter for at least minutes, take pictures from different angles, in addition to sharper imaging. We can speculate they may also have sharper non-optical imaging, such as thermal or radar
Ok, but what if there are several satellites that cover iran at all times? What if they would need to hide from most directions all of the time? Because I think that's basically the situation right now. The whole world is being monitored from multiple angles all of the time by several different governments. At that point, reconnaissance aircraft in general seem a little redundant.
I think the only real utility they offer is the ability to swap out sensors between flights and upgrade old cameras to the new cutting edge options whenever they're available.
My money's on hegseth wants the sonic booms when he's giving a speech about how manly the army is. Considering they have that unmanned x-37B for spy satellite stuff, and it would be a massive amount of money to bring back the blackbird, while NASA is having its budget cut, it is 100% going to be for some self serving promotion.
I would just like to point out that while not confirmed, it has been speculated since the mid-2000s that the actual imaging resolution of the satellites is closer to 2mm. Or as the joke goes, we'll figure out what brand of cigarettes you smoke by reading the filter.
I would say that that's purely speculation. Physics won't allow it. The diffraction limit basically limits the best resolution to about 10 cm (assuming an altitude of 200 km, blue light and a humongously large lens with a diameter of 1 m). It's likely that they're quite close to the diffraction limit and maybe they have even more extreme hardware than I would guess, but a two orders of magnitude better resolution isn't happening anytime soon I think.
This is not my area of expertise at all. With that said, multi spectrum multilens sub visible light sensor array.
NASA flies U-2 spy planes over wildfires. They might be able to do the same thing with the SR-71. I really don't know, that's my best guess for a realistic use case.
The thing they aren't mentioning is that the only reason to try and take a sixty year old plane out of mothballs is that they can't make them anymore.
They've been superceded. Any military role they had is now done better and safer by satellites.
Unless you want to study a flight of a fast moving object in the atmosphere (something NASA may want to do as a research agency) there is no need for the SR71.
Sure, they thought they didn't need the capability anymore, that satellites would keep making it more and more obsolete and here we are, when they realize those satellites will last as long as it takes for a missile or hunter killer to intercept it in a real peer nation war.
And now they're finding out the factory that provided the titanium or polycarbonate whatever got moved to Beijing in 2004.
That or this is all a very stupid PR stunt, or they just wanted to strip it for parts, who the hell knows?
Shit, if you told me Trump just sold it to the Saudis and pocketed the cash that's believable too.
Not really. The USA still leads the way in manufacturing high end aerospace stuff and machining titanium.
The reason the SR71 production line closed down was cause the government contract for them ended decades ago. Give the aerospace companies a new billion dollar contract and they'll crank out as many SR71's as you want. We do that with the 6th generation jets and they've done a pretty good job of fulfilling those orders.
China is leader of the consumer grade manufacturing sector, no question of that, and I would say they're catching up. But the USA still has a sizable manufacturing base and whats left are niches like aerospace and medical.
There are plenty of reasons to take one out,
They could be doing non destructive testing on it
They could have a hypothesis on how some phenonomen works and want to do a test on an already built product vs spending billions on a new product
They could be working on a similar design and the original drawings (hand drawn) have an inconsistency that they want to compare to the real product
it’s not like they are sending it on spy missions again, it’s nasa wanting to see it and it’s also possible they don’t even NEED the blackbird but a bunch of aerospace nerds found an excuse to pull out a plane that’s considered one of the coolest planes of all time
All the titanium for the current ones came from Russia. They're even harder to trade with now than they were in the cold war
We didn't directly trade with them then, and we wouldn't now. If the government wanted it, they'd just do the same thing and use intermediary countries and shell companies.
But you could sell the titanium and buy gold ornaments at Home Depot.
That was during the cold war in the 60s and 70s things are different now. I am not sure how different, but they are.
Don't you guys see it: If really crazy stuff happens and satellites are taken out of the sky, youre going to see to do some old-school reconnaissance.
Who cares why - this plane is so fucking awesome it’s an end unto itself.
Grandpa watched The Right Stuff last night, for the love of god someone disable his line to the Pentagon.
No, “grandpa” grew up reading the X-Men and later learned what a marvelous piece of extreme engineering this plane actually is. I’ve seen variants at aerospace museums. They are truly beautiful to behold.
This is likely the majority of the reason anyway
I agree.
"BREAK OUT THE SR 71
BLACKBIRD, My mate Ben needs a 7 year old boy to 'do activities with' in Israel in two hours. Go go go.Thank You For Attention To This Matter."
Paedo in Chief Donvict J Drumpf!!
It's probably some senile whim from Dear Leader. Remember when he told the navy what kind of catapult they should use?
If Trump came up with this, we'd have found out about it via Twitter the moment the thought came into his head.
I guess we can put to rest the idea that the US government has successfully reverse engineered UFOs. Because if they had, there would be absolutely no need to do this if we could fly anywhere in the world in minutes or seconds and invisibly.
Maybe they have done that, they're just really slow, and not actually any better than what we have?
UFOs are most likely manmade, otherwise probably something other-dimensional like angels or demons. The distances in space are too vast for visitors, the idea breaks down in more than one way once you dig into it.
I'm enjoying this - "We've learned enough science now that we realize it's more likely fantasy creatures would be visiting us than that technologically advanced sentients would be traveling interstellar distances to visit."
That isn't a terrible representation. And not necessarily unscientific.
What's really funny is the Blackbird was absolutely the cause of more than a few UFO sightings, some that have been confirmed in hindsight.
We have no way of knowing if they've overcome the obstacle of traveling long distances in space.
Yeah but why would they do it to come here? I mean, gestures vaguely at everything
To study us. You might as well ask why scientists bring wild animals in to study.
Also, if they were billions of light years away and they looked at our planet from afar, they would see our planet billions of years ago. No reason to visit. What are the chances of a random visit?
If we know that, so do they. If intergalactic travel is no different to them than driving across town is to you and me, why wouldn't they?
Teleportation or something like that happens multiple times in the Bible, even if fiction it could contain nuggets of truth
Also why does increased activity in that sphere always correspond with batshit political times. Also why are all the UFO celebs obvious fucking grifters. Also...
Or maybe thats just what they want you to think 🧐
the ol' reverse psychology
I can hear that theme song now.
https://tidal.com/track/289960834/u
Vampire on an aircraft carrier.
"Moon's haunted"
"Jeff, the Blackbird doesn't go to the moon."
"According to the unclassified spec sheets."
It's so they can traffick girls all around the world at record speed
NASA?
Yeah. The country is dead. NASA was gutted by doge and has had trump cultists running it and stealing their data. It will be privatized/replaced with SpaceX soon enough.
I wish people would understand how over it has been since doge. Foreign agent CEOs with massive conflicts of interest illegally seized, copied, and manipulated ALL of our most sensitive data.
OPM, SSA, Pentagon, etc. they took everything. If you have even held a clearance you would understand that nothing is safe anymore, nothing will be true anymore. They can wipe out every piece of information that you ever existed in the federal government. They can PUT anything in any record of yours in the federal government. No one will ever be able to hold them accountable for anything because they can cripple our government.
Nothing matters anymore because they COUPED THEN KILLED AMERICA and everyone is going to be so happy when "Dems win"
It’s fun speculation to assume this is for military reasons but remember nasa s a civilian agency. Perhaps it’s connected to their research on supersonic and hypersonic flights
Or someone as NASA got a fun project greenlit. They threw it into the budget for the lulz, and it didn’t get cut. 😆
You’re most likely correct. They need a really fast plane to test sonic boom dampening at Mach 3+ speeds, and they can’t build a specialty plane yet.
That's my thought as well, they want data for something they're building.
They're selling it to Disney to use in the new X-Men movies.
They did it back in the 90s to do some research. Probably the same now.
We can’t really build stuff like that anymore. The people who designed it had an intuitive grasp for aeronautics. You can’t teach intuition to a computer.
I mean it flew in operations up until 1990 and its last actual flight was in 1999.
I mean that's just a silly claim, the HTV-2 drone has literally gone mach 20, which is nearly 10 times faster than the SR71. Plus the SR72 project is currently in development with aims to be nearly twice as fast as the SR71.
Twice!!!????? Is it manned?
Supposedly it's supposed to be optionally manned.
Yes, we can build such stuff these days. There is no shortage of engineers in the USA, there is a shortage of employers willing to pay well.
There is no shortage of experienced machinist, in fact we have far more advanced manufacturing capabilities than we did in the 1950's. We just have a smaller industrial footprint than we did in the 1950's but there are plenty of companies that can machine titanium (in fact there are more machinist nowadays that know how to machine titanium because its more common than it was in the 1950's.)
The shortage is in investors willing to invest in talented labor and the tooling to make the aircraft. The idea that we "lost" these skills is a general misunderstanding of how things work and reddit-tier click-bait "i'm smart" type headlines.
Yes, we can build a lunar lander even thought all the guys who built the original are dead. It would be a better lander than the originals. Yes, we can build rocket engines as good or better than the F1's on the Saturn V. In fact SpaceX developed engine technology that far surpasses the F1's for their boosters and just because they didn't make 5 gigantic ones (opting for 33 smaller units) doesn't mean they aren't a better platform. The Saturn V couldn't land it's booster to be reused later on.
boomer nostalgia is a disease, and it isn't more complicated than that
I wonder what would happen if you painted a blackbird with Vantablack paint?
If it flew at night would you be able to see it?
Would it stand out as darker than the darkness?
Its going to be the most basic grift possible, they're going to read your credit card numbers.
They don't need all this to do that. All those numbers are breached already anyway.
I envy your username and wish I had come up with it. Envy of your humour.
Call him "...3" for short!
I don't get it?
It's the new emergency number
Call him "...3" for short!
I mean if it's the fastest, why would it really be retired? It'd be like Michael Phelps retiring after his first gold medal.
My guess would be as a platform for leo satelite attack. Yes it is unarmed, but that could be changed.
They did that from an F-15 back in the 80s.
That would probably be better suited for a U2 since they have a higher service ceiling.
Satelites move fast, might speed be a factor?
Im just going to use my intuition to address the first half of that train of thought, cause it's a good question. But knowing what I have learned about the SR-71, speed could also be the reason you wouldn't want munitions on the airframe. At max speed, heat becomes a real issue. That's why the SR-71 is black and earned the Blackbird moniker. Black readiates heat more efficiently, allowing more heat generated by friction to be radiated away from the plane. Adding any sort of munition to the airframe would increase friction exponentially at supersonic speeds. So not only do you deal with extra drag, but more heat is generated as well. If you move it into the frame itself, you need to redesign the whole plane and reduce fuel storage. I'm not even sure any munitions could tolerate the force of deployment at the supersonic speeds that the SR-71 would be flying at.
The other half that i think is the more fundamental reason why this claerly isn't a testbed for some LEO satellite hunter of some sort, is that satellites move at incredible speeds. A satellite in LEO is traveling about 17,000 mph while the Blackbird's max speed is around 2,200 mph. Low Earth orbit is ~400km while the cruising altitude of the SR-71 is ~24km. So the weapon would need a range of at least 375km. We'll just give it a 500km range. The SR-71 would stay within the 500km range for 1:41 and a U2 at the same altitude at max speed would be in range for 1:29. Just 12 seconds longer. Seems pretty negligible to me, but I work in healthcare, not militaristic weapons development and deployment so 🤷🏼
Fair and well reasoned enough. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
That sounds like a pretty damn good guess to me
I was worried at first, why do they need that right now? But looking over the specs, this would be like taking a classic corvette to a bank robbery. So this is for sure for show and possibly to add more sensors to record data they couldn't previously record. Me thinks they want to make another that could maybe go to space proper and deploy something.
This is pure speculation, I'm not an expert.
Whenever nasa's involved it's always something to do with airflow dynamics or something. If it was the US military I would assume that though.
We know that NASA is doing research on both supersonic and hypersonic airflow. There are extremely few existing aircraft they could use for hypersonic testing
I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to use it to concept test something related to aero for the x-37
To speculate further, the stated reason for attacking Iran was nuclear weapon development. Perhaps there are sensors to track that, that can’t operate from satellite
If it were about Iranian nuclear weapon development, it wouldn't be NASA doing the surveillance. Although weather phenomena is in NASA's purview.
We already had high confidence intel before the war Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. But since then, Trump has expressed that a nuke is the only thing he would respect.
If there were, they'd probably be on the U-2.
I mean it would be awesome to have a chance to see it fly
I took my then-GF's kids to see it. They're grown and they still talk about it.
I saw it do a fly-by, with afterburners on, at an airshow back when i was a kid
I think I know why.....
Bitches love cannons
DO YOU EVEN READ MY CHRISTMAS LIST?!
lord dipshit no-doubt has something to do with this.
Nasa's plan: "Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible."
X-Men did it.
Perhaps NASA is doing it to make a trophy that might impress the imbecile emperor in hopes of securing funding for space science.
Like in Rainbow Mars when the Time Travel Bureau has to go on safari to capture extinct pets for their imbecile emperor.
Is that an actual movie? Sounds like the sequel to Idiocracy. Or a sequel to current real world events. I've been having trouble telling apart these things.
Sorry Blackbird fans, they just need the bits to resurrect Optimus Prime
Some things just shouldn't be a gif.
Michael Bay’s direction has been known to melt brains
Isn't he like a semi-truck or something?
Of course, but bits of a previously sentient SR-71 Blackbird make him feel so much better and who are we to argue with that
The SR-71 is the fastest production plane ever made that we know of. If one is being brought out of retirement, my first inclination would be to think it's because something bad happened and they ran out of "Auroras" or whatever even faster black project jet they replaced it with.
Or America stopped being able to make them natively.
They can make it to space, so....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07IEFNt0TuM
To test against the SR-72.
SS-72 Orangeturd
No real reason, they just want to pump more hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.
Cause this plane is so fucking cool ! If only ESA could do the same with Le Concorde
It was economically unviable and by now, woefully technologically outdated.
As a climate-conscious person, the concorde can stay exactly where it is and never move again thank you. That thing burned several times as much kerosene as a standard plane for the same journey with less cargo space, etc
As cool as they are this is the truth. Once spy satellites began transmitting digital images (the first few used film and dropped capsules back to earth to be developed) the SR71 began obsolete and too risky to fly.
Now we have satellites that are constantly observing the "hot spots" around the planet which is safer than having pilots fly across enemy airspace.
My guess is NASA is using these to test supersonic attributes since they have tons of data on the SR71 and NASA is currently developing supersonic planes that don't create sonic booms.
What's interesting about supersonic flight is that there's been some developments on making supersonic flight more fuel efficient.
The F-22's big strategic advantage is that it can supercruise at Mach 1.5, without afterburners, and although the details are not publicly known, the publicly known facts suggest that it's about 3x as fuel efficient as the other fighters in the US arsenal.
If they can get supersonic flight to be more fuel efficient, and avoid sonic booms (an active area of research for NASA's X-59 project), and we develop manufacturing capacity for huge amounts of synthetic sustainable aviation fuel from CO2 and water and green energy, then maybe we'll be at a place where supersonic commercial flights can be both economically feasible AND environmentally responsible. Probably not in my lifetime, but still something I expect to happen in the next century or so.
That's a lot of ifs.
And for what it's worth, the concorde had afterburner-free cruising. It needed them for takeoff only.
And keep in mind that fuel prices are much higher now than in the 90-00s.
Yeah, the Concorde was interesting in that its design was optimized for cruising, so that taxiing, takeoff, and reaching cruise altitude/speed took a gargantuan amount of fuel compared to other aircraft and even to its own cruising efficiency.
I can see why someone could look at that and assume that they could do better with modern design principles, including the knowledge that planes need way more passenger seats to improve the per passenger efficiency.
Then again, the company that took the most concrete steps towards developing a supersonic engine pivoted to creating gas turbines for AI data centers (but was just dropped by its major customer on that, so who knows what they do next).
The original was already pretty packed (I visited it) and there's a limit to how little leg room you can take away from someone paying concorde prices for a flight...
And keep in mind that many of the recent advances in planes revolve around high - bypass designs which only work subsonic if I'm not mistaken.
And before then, the concorde was already 3-4x more fuel per seat...
Yeah, I'm not an aerospace guy, but I'm wondering whether the maturity of the commerical passenger air travel industry has lessons to adopt for the 60 years since the Concorde was designed. The cabin and fuselage were so small that there's not a lot of room for different seating configurations, the over-land speed restrictions limited its feasible routes.
I'm middle of the road when it comes to optimism about whether commercial supersonic flight will approach business class prices within the next 2 or 3 decades, and whether such a service could one day be environmentally equivalent to the 2026 impact of 2026 commerical air travel.
As a climate conscious person plane is bad end of the line.
Plane as public transport system are bad. Plane as piece of engineering are cool.
Plane are cool and I love them but seeing the hypocrisi of "conscious climate" ppl always rub me the wrong way. It s always so selective and so performative. Hum actually I dont use supersonic flight transportation not cause they dont exist anymore but because I'm a conscious climate person
I wonder if they could use it as a testbed for launching hypersonic ramjet-driven weapons that are optimized for high speed to the point that they can't function below very high speeds. Wasn't designed for that, but it'd be an application where survivability in enemy space wouldn't matter, they wouldn't need many, and speed would be important. We are doing work on hypersonic weapons.
searches
It sounds like there were plans for a plane that filled something along the lines of that role:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_SR-72
EDIT: Scramjets apparently have a floor speed that's higher than the SR-71's ceiling speed, so I don't think an SR-71 could be used to get a scramjet-based hypersonic weapon up to operational speed; it'd need to be a ramjet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet
EDIT2: It sounds like Mach 5 isn't the scramjet floor (the article is probably just giving the floor for "hypersonic") but it sounds like past scramjets still had to be boosted to close to that, a higher speed than the SR-71 could manage:
supersonic missles might have something to do with it
Should be a bargain finding parts for it. The people who built and worked on it are probably all retired or dead.
X-Men are real!
Mysterious, won’t say why, what are they hiding the shocking truth they aren’t telling you….
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Wasn't NASA defunded?
Definitely aliens
Is it aliens? It’s gotta be cause of aliens.
Obviously this is counterintelligence. They are, in fact, pushing the world's fastest plane. That's why it goes so fast, actually. The occult science these NASA dogs do thorns, y'know?
A famous popstar paid people to smuggle live chickens into his hotel room every night. He paid other people to smuggle them back out.
I'm thinking it's because no drone can fly that high or fast. Which gives it an advantage in a world filled with drones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21
Higher and faster. Not a successful program, though.
These days we have the X-37, which goes even higher and faster. I'm sure we could drop a computer flight system into any aircraft and make it a drone with sufficient work, too.
I love how strange it looks
Why would a drone be incapable of flying higher and faster than a human driven aircraft?
It's theoretically possible for them to do that. But not at the budgets currently available. This isn't just any human-driven aircraft.
They want a jet that works. It's not NASA's SR-71, the SR-71 was made by Lockheed.
F35s are chronically grounded with software issues. They want a plane that works.
The F-35 isn’t grounded, nor does it have anything to do with NASA.
Nor would an SR-71 play anywhere near the same role as an F-35 lol. They’re apples to oranges.
they are both hypersonic aircraft.
They are not. The F-35 has a top speed of Mach 1.6. It's a supersonic aircraft.
The SR-71 has a top speed of Mach 3.2 lol. Literally twice as fast as the F-35 but still well short of the Mach 5 required for hypersonic flight.
The F-35 also has a flight ceiling of 50,000 feet, while the SR-71 has an 85,000 foot ceiling.
The SR-71 served exactly one role: High supersonic aerial reconnaissance. No weapons, nothing. Just fly higher and faster than anything else on the planet.
The F-35 is a strike fighter and air superiority fighter.
They're really not comparable.
Technically, they're both supersonic, not hypersonic, but yeah, that's just semantics. The actual important detail is that the SR-71 is twice as fast (or more) as the F-35. There's a lot of testing you can do with the former that's just not possible with the latter.
Neither does the SR-71.
fucking Google F35 software issues, chronic problems. they can't fix it.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/f-35-software-upgrades-stagnated-warns-new-report-ps-031726
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/02/f-35-programs-software-development-isnt-getting-any-better-pentagon-report-finds/402725/
https://www.defensenews.com/smr/hidden-troubles-f35/2021/07/16/the-number-of-major-f-35-flaws-is-shrinking-but-the-pentagon-is-keeping-details-of-the-problems-under-wraps/
Those links aren't smoking guns.
The first details troubled rollout of software upgrades, "upgrades" being the key word. That's really just the nature of complicated software development in general. The previous complete package of software is already up-to-task and running it longer than desired isn't a huge issue.
The second says they can't fix multiple problems simultaneously, which is again another common software development reality and a very different statement than not being able to fix things.
The third flat out says the opposite in that many fixes actually have been completed, just not all of them yet. It's an adjacent issue, but the headline also frames the secret keeping as a bad thing when that's just a sensible thing to do.
The F-35 has nothing to do with this, but just to correct anyone's misconceptions, F-35 loss and readiness rates only sound bad because that kind of coverage gets clicks/views. When you add back in the context of comparison to other aircraft and the total number of airframes produced and hours flown, the F-35 is actually performing great.
The blackbird is a spy plane. It's not something they can launch a payload from, not can it do anything space related. All it does is go super fast and snap pictures. Conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this because the only thing NASA might want it for is to surveil UFO's. There are all sorts of stories of energy orbs and weird stuff being seen and then helicopters showing up later, after they've vanished.
On the contrary, NASA mounted stuff to it for research in the 90s:
Something something moon landing something area 51.
NASA, the famously underfunded organization that has to deal with that crap even today is pulling out military stealth fighters.
It's not a fighter, the SR71 is totally unarmed. The SR stands for Stealth Reconnaissance.
Close but not quite, it stands for strategic reconnaissance. It's not stealth. Stealth technology didn't come into existence until the late 80s early 90s
But what if we repurposed it to stand for Scientific Research instead? 🤔
Why stop there? SR could stand for Shaky Rimjob.
It was actually originally designed to have two different versions, one for each role. But the fighter version was scrapped, and only the recon version went into actual production.
Kind of a shame, really. It would make a really badass fighter. More of an 'interceptor' maybe? -- because it's definitely not going to be doing any dogfighting. Then again, maybe 'interceptor' isn't the right word either, because it takes a long time to get one off the ground and you'd never be scrambling them in an emergency to intercept enemy planes. But once in the air and at speed, it would be able to outrun and catch any enemy plane, and it could be practically untouchable because it could simply outrun any missiles or even bullets fired at it.
I think the closest comparison to what it would be best for is basically air cavalry. Dive in at high speed for a devastating hit-and-run, and then do it again
It would probably be a missle platform.
Probably had the Phoenix missle or similar range weapon in mind for air to air.
Im not sure it flies slow enough for a gun to work properly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12
When at top speed, yeah, traditional guns wouldn't work well. You could still shoot, sure, but the bullets would quickly be slowed down by air resistance, while the aircraft keeps flying ... there could be a very real danger of overtaking your own bullets and hitting them from behind. The relative speed wouldn't be very high, so they probably wouldn't do much damage on impact, but they could do a lot of damage if one of the engines ingests one, so still a bad idea.
But when at top speed, it's already traveling faster than most bullets. At that point, you don't need a 'gun' anymore. Just drop some inert projectiles while doing your flyby, and those projectiles will hit your target with the force of bullets.
Would have been funny to put in a tail gun.
Sure, if it had any payload capacity. But it doesn't.
Getting a machine up to that speed is hard, real hard. The margins are extremely small. So the moment you start adding additional moving parts to it, opening payload bays, weapons release mechanisms, a few 400 lb missiles... And don't forget, all those additional components also take up additional volume, higher volume means more air displacement, which means more drag. Higher volume also means the area of the airframe gets larger, that means additional mass.
All of a sudden, that plane can't hit mach 3 anymore and you don't actually have an untouchable weapons delivery system anymore.
This is probably why a combat version of the aircraft was abandoned, it doesn't really make sense.
I was mostly going for a [email protected] thing tbh, because of exactly what you were saying
It’s probably terrible at dogfights though.
Modern fighters don't really do dogfights anymore.
Today's air-to-air engagements are usually just a matter of launching a missile at the other plane, usually from so far away that they're beyond the horizon. And in that kind of engagement, there are two things that determine which combatant is more effective: speed and range. SR-71 brings the ultimate in speed to the equation, now it just needs some good, long-range missiles.
Stealth and detection play a big part too. Can't target what your sensors can't see.
A bomber interceptor is the role that comes to mind for me, a Blackbird could climb to altitude and intercept any bomber aircraft heading to the USA. I suspect the invention of the ICBM put a stop to that though.
This is the internet. Don't be coming round here stating facts that aren't true.
It was originally the RS-71, for "reconnaissance/strike". (source)
Also, don't forget about the closely-related YF-12 interceptor.
Yeah that's the important part for sure. 🙄
If NASA needs an extremely fast, high-altitude aircraft, it would be much cheaper to bring SR-71s out of retirement than to build completely new aircraft from scratch.
As for why they'd want it...
Maybe they want to experiment with using it as a space launch platform, getting it very high and up to speed and then launching a (relatively) small rocket from its back to launch that rocket into space.
Maybe they have a new engine design to operate at very high altitudes and speeds, and they want the SR-71 as a test platform to mount those engines on and test them in real world conditions.
Maybe they just want to do some upper atmosphere/ionosphere measurements, and the SR-71 is a handy way to get there.
Maybe they want to try operating a telescope from it, using it as a way to get most of Earth's atmosphere out of the way and have less distortion/interference. (There already is such a telescope in operation, based on a commercial airliner, but the SR-71 could go higher and presumably do the job even better.)
Maybe now that they're barred from running climate research satellites, they're looking for an alternative, non-satellite based option they could mount instruments to and take the same measurements from.
Or, most likely, something else I haven't even thought of.
It had a drone that would attach to the top of it too. Way ahead of its time
Hm... Come to think of it, that could be a really cool application for this aircraft in a modern military setting. It was basically untouchable when flying high and fast, which was what made it a good recon aircraft. But in the modern day, it could be used as an equally untouchable drone bomber. During a high-altitude flyby, drop a drone package or two so that they'll fall to earth and then deploy when a few hundred feet from the ground. Then you can use those drones to surgically strike at specific very high value targets, and by the time they hit, the 'bomber' is already long gone. Basically, it could be used as a substitute for spycraft and insurgency, giving a nearly unstoppable way to infiltrate combat drones far, far behind enemy lines.
The SR-71 can get up to 85k feet, so there are conceivable applications.
But this is a plane that already exists, largely for the purpose of surveillance. It's only "military" in the sense that it was requisitioned by the air force. It's not armed.
You're right, but I was focusing more on how NASA isn't exactly overflowing with funding. Even if they roll them out of mothballs fueling it alone is going to be pretty expensive.
What's the alternative?
I don't know what theyre don't so I can't answer that. My not knowing their goal doesn't make fuel appear either though.
Do you know? Genuinely asking.